ALRAUNE - Arno Press, 1st 1911/1976 OCCULT, SCI-FI, SEXUALITY, EVIL EXPERIMENTS

ALRAUNEBook Details + Condition: Arno Press (New York). First Edition thus, 1976. Part of Arno Press' hard-to-find "Supernatural & Occult Fiction" collection. Very scarce facsimile reprint of the original publication, originally released in German, in 1911. Hardcover with purple boards and silver titling to front and spine. 342 pages. Translated by S. Guy Endore and beautifully illustrated by Mahlon Blaine. ALRAUNE is the second volume in Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Frank Braun trilogy: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Alraune, and Vampire. Inspired by medieval German beliefs in the occult properties of the mandrake root (alraune), the humanoid-shaped mandrake root or Mandragora officinarum was widely believed to be produced by the semen of hanged men under the gallows. Among other beliefs, alchemists claimed that hanged men ejaculated after their necks were broken and that the earth absorbed their final "strengths". In the story, occult student Frank Braun persuades his cruel uncle to create a c